"Illegal" music concert shows how disunity murdered Uganda's entertainment industry

At the start of this week, celebrated musician, Bebe Cool came out to express his disappointment about the entertainment stakeholders and Uganda’s authorities for not swinging into action to stop the ‘The Big Brunch’, an event organized by Kasana Events in conjunction with Speke Resort, featuring Nigerian breakthrough stars, Omar Lay and Tems, yet all events in this banana republic have been banned on grounds of stopping the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.

And when the musician asserted that he was going to single handedly sabotage this event, I saw an entertainer who deeply cares about the industry as a whole, but hey, to my heavy shock, when I later on checked his socials (where he had voiced out this injustice), the singer had deleted the post and so to my mind, I began thinking that perhaps the brown envelope has shut him up like it always does.

Anyhow, this event then proved me once again that disunity is immensely responsible for the slow growth, or what one would term the ‘massacre of our entertainment industry’.

As anticipated, after the switch of the venue, the event went down successfully only to shock many, but what surprises me though is that entertainers who are now complaining about this event happening here, at the glance of Bebe Cool’s post, these very people had the perfect time to boldly add their voices and condemn it.

Unfortunately, they didn’t, and it all disunity here.

If Bebe Cool’s post forced the organizers to change the venue, imagine the impact the Ugandan Musicians Association (UMA) would have created in stopping this event if they came out as a strong voice, with all artistes under the association to condemn this ‘nyokery’.

It is hard to imagine that no single Ugandan artiste questioned the travel documents which had a performance clearance to permit these Nigerians to come and step on us in our own country. Forsooth, the disunity our industry is beyond repair.

Conclusively, we ought to learn a lot from the Nigeria’s entertainment industry which has been built on strong unity to push the whole industry but not as single individuals. Certainly, this incident would not have happened in their country for they’d all stand as one and condemn, and that’s something we lack.